Thyrocare founder Arokiaswamy Velumani has said he never recruited anyone with experience till the time he was running the company. Instead, he believed in hiring freshers, training them on the job and with time giving them opportunity in senior roles.
In a conversation with YouTuber Raj Shamani on the podcast Figuring Out, Velumani said that his hiring policy was influenced by the struggle he had faced landing a job after finishing college.
Reminiscing his younger days, he said: “I thought there are many enterprises, factories in Coimbatore. I should get a job. But I failed in about 50 interviews. The reason was everyone was asking: ‘Do you have experience?’ Exam finished in May, I am attending the interview in June, where will I bring experience from?”
That’s when Velumani promised himself if he ever ran a company, he’d not hire anyone with experience.
“In 1978, when my age was 19, I had taken a decision. If I ever run a company myself, I will only hire freshers and not anyone with experience. Trust me, I have never recruited an experienced man into my organization. 25,000 freshers I have employed. I don't think anybody else would have dared to do it and I have done it,” he said.
The policy was beneficial in managing employee cost, according to Velumani. “My competitor’s employee cost was 25%, my employee cost was 10%,” he said.
He encouraged budding entrepreneurs to give opportunity and handhold freshers. “I’d like to tell this to entrepreneurs: If you yourself train your employees for 100 days, then that employee is better than your competitor’s employee who has trained for a thousand days,” he said.
Velumani explained how he could run the business without hiring experienced professionals.
He said: “You need to keep an assembly line on. What is assembly line? Keep hiring freshers. On the first day, the fresher will do a small task. Next day the fresher will do another work. By the time the third month ends, the fresher can do the full job. He is getting locally trained. So, this assembly line once it is there, the senior most man you can allow to go. Every organization has got underpaid assets and overpaid liabilities. How will you get rid of liabilities if you don't have resources to replace?”
He said he gauged an employee on a few parameters, which included stamina, discipline, intelligence and focus. If an employee was found wanting in any of these parameters, the employee had to be shown the door. But the employees who were with the company were thankful for the growth opportunities within the company.
“Out of the 25,000 people, we only retained 2,500. The rest were sent home. You know one thing my people loved in the entire 25 years? [They’d say:] ‘Sir has not brought anybody from outside above us. If there is an empty chair above, it’s for me’. This is the most powerful motivation in any organisation.”
Velumani sold his majority stake in Thyrocare Technologies in June 2021 to PharmEasy, a then-up-and-coming online healthcare startup. The sale involved a significant portion of his over 66% holdings. In the podcast, he shared the reason behind his decision to exit the company he had built from scratch. He said he had lost his wife, who was his pillar of support, due to cancer just before the company went public.
“The decision to sell the company was taken in 2016 when I lost my wife.” However, Velumani did not want to reach out to a buyer to sell because he knew he wouldn’t get a good valuation.
“I patiently waited. Then Covid came. During Covid, Thyrocare was the first name in the private laboratory PCR testing list. I got a very powerful attention of the market. My turnover per day was Rs 1 crore, it became Rs 2 crores. My share price was 450, it became 1,200. And that time somebody was interested in my stock, and I thought I must move out. I got the best price. I got a billion dollar market cap and I just sold it.”